Gene Notes

Some random and some not-so-random thoughts on family history.

Tuesday, November 9, 2010

Snowball Effect* - Or OCFRD**

I don't even know how it started. Except that I was looking at an obituary and trying to figure out if this person connected to any of the Percivals I knew were connected in Texas. First I found Sarah Etta Dunham Hart (see Monday's blog) and before I knew it, my research reached back in to Michigan and Illinois and Ohio. Ohio represented descendants of Simon Perkins Percival through his son, Norris Simon and then later through some of Simon's descendants in Illinois. Norris Simon Percival, Sr. moved on to Texas, died there in 1933 and his line produced more Norris Simon Percivals. A grandson of Simon P. Percival, Charles Scofield Percival, produced a son named Stanley who died in Arizona. Another son, William, died in Illinois. To add confusion to the mix, I added another Charles to the Percival line, a son of William Oval Percival. Thanks to Ancestry, I now have several generations of births, deaths, obituaries, marriage notices, and burials to deal with. Big pile on my desk now to deal with.

*Snowball effect is a figurative term for a process that starts from an initial state of small significance and builds upon itself, becoming larger, and perhaps potentially dangerous or disastrous, though it might be beneficial instead. - Wikipedia.**OCFRD - Obsessive Compulsive Family Research Disorder.